Karen Campbell put in a double showing in the Anthology (Fiction) category. Her collection, Little Whispers, was shortlisted and she also contributed to the UK anthology L is For… Lots of familiar authors in that (Kiki Archer, VG Lee, Clare Lydon etc.).

Jody Klaire is a finalist in the Debut Author category with The Empath, Sarah Waters’The Paying Guests popped up in the Romantic Intrigue section and KE Payne’sBecause of Her was shortlisted in the YA category.

RJ Samuel is a popular gal and A Place Somewheremade it onto the shortlists of both the Ann Bannon popular choice category and the Tee Corinne Cover Design Award.

High fives all round for a good showing in the American dominated awards, or perhaps a cordial handshake will a solemn nod of approval. Winners will be announced at the GCLS conference in New Orleans on 22nd July. Fingers crossed lots of those Brits get a nice glass lump of an award on the night. Good luck everyone.

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Right, moving on with the rest of this week’s business.

Cari Hunter’s imminent arrival has popped its head out for a good look. You can have a sneak peek at the prologue and first two chapters of No Good Reason over here. Cari promises the book will be Brittier than a buggering cold day at Blackpool and the extract features the text “Running late. Got puked on. Fancy a chippy tea at mine instead?”

Gill McKnight’sSoul Selecta was reviewed over on C-Spot Reviews. Its review of Gill’s tale of the love-matching Soul Selecta begins: “Soul Selecta is an odd novel. A funny, stimulating, enjoyable read, but still a little odd. I like odd, however, so it’s all good.” And it ends: “Soul Selecta ignores most lesfic plot arcs and completely entertained me with trashy Olympian gods, young lesbian love, some hot sex, a conundrum, and enough twisty fun that I consulted several times with my cats about what might happen next. Recommended.” Well I’d say. Sounds fabulous.

Lesley Davis has been blogging over on the Bold Strokes site about characters and stories that stay with you when reading and playing games. Trent, from her novel Playing Passion’s Game, is one character who always has her ear and Lesley talks about her reappearance in her latest novel Playing in Shadow:

“She’s one of my favourite characters I have created and I have so much more to share about her. So while romance weaves it spell around Bryce and Scarlet, Trent and Juliet will be preparing for motherhood. And as you can imagine, with these characters, it’s not going to be all boring bibs and baby grows!”

Evangeline Jennings has been over at Women and Words talking about the route she has taken on her way to publishing her latest book, Riding in Cars With Girls – it’s a roundabout one that you can follow here. The book itself is a collection of short stories, from “ESCORT – A high class hooker fucks a Mafia Don to death” to “TRANS AM – A widow hunts her husband’s killer across America. Route 666.” Hop in over here for a ride.

Meanwhile Jane Retzig‘s The Full Legacy (a romance with a hint of the supernatural) has been published as an audiobook. It’s available on Audible, Amazon and will be available from iTunes soon. It’s narrated by Elizabeth Shelly who Jane says has done a brilliant job.

Clare Lydon reported from the Indie Author Fair in London:

“it was also a real treat to be in Foyles’ flagship bookshop selling my novels – I was immensely proud. Plus, if you could bottle the upbeat energy in that room and sell it, you’d make a mint. After visiting The London Book Fair and hearing much indie author bashing, it was brilliant to soak up and add to the enthusiasm and gung-ho attitude of all the authors and readers present. We’re living proof that publishing is changing and only for the better.”

Run, the debut novel from new author Pat Adams-Wright, has hit the digital shelves. Here’s the blurb.

For Charlie Reinette, it was a typical Friday night out with her work mates. Or so she thought… Instead, she found herself in the midst of a domestic dispute, rescuing a woman she hardly knows and setting off a deadly chain of events. Harbouring the rescued woman finds them having to run from murder and the infernos raging behind them. Not quite the woman her friends think she is, Charlie has to face her past, her future, and everything in between as she fights for her life and the life of the woman she saved. Can the two women, Charlie’s group of eclectic friends, and the police catch the man terrorising them across Europe? How will they stay ahead of his game? One thing’s for certain…they need to RUN!

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Finally a few items in brief.

Should you start a novel with dialogue? No but yes says Jen Silver. She talks about one of the many writing rules and her new novel here.

Rachel Dax, author of the Pope Joan series, has started a fundraiser for her next film. A Delicate Love is a short film about “a young man’s first taste of love leads to a collision of fantasy and food“. Click here for further details.

Orla Broderick started an initiative to fill the bare shelves of a local Women’s Aid shelter with books. She donated two copies of her January Flower and put out a plea for other authors to donate. The support has been so fantastic that she’s extending the scheme to more shelters in Scotland. If you would like to donate please read about Orla’s plans here.

Polari is off to the seaside with a new venue in Hastings for the next six months. You can find out more about Polari on Sea’s first event on Facebook. And after last year’s success, Paul Burston has secured funding for another Polari national tour. Watch this space for further details.

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…Oh I do like to be beside the seaside… But I’ll settle for sitting in a sunny garden with my feet in a paddling pool. Tatty bye!

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Evangeline Jennings as guest blogger. Born and raised in Liverpool, Evangeline now spends most of her time in Austin, Texas. She is the author of Riding in Cars with Girls, a crime-themed collection of essentially feminist, very noir, and almost entirely queer short stories and novellas, and she is the founding editor of the Pankhearst writers collective. She describes herself as an unreliable narrator who tells lies for fun and profit. Mostly fun…

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When I was younger and confused about all kinds of things, it was a rare pleasure to discover a writer or character I could connect with. Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon was one. Mary Wing’s Emma Victor another. I found them sitting on my father’s bookshelves, side-by-side.

Looking back, they were my gateway drugs. The Women’s Press was my dealer. And my life was never the same again.

Lindsay was a Scottish journalist. Emma a burned-out publicist working on a women’s help line in Boston. Later she moved to San Francisco – where else? – and set up as a proper licensed detective. One day, Emma introduced me to Pam Nilsen, Barbara Wilson’s Seattle-based printer and part-time detective.

In The Dog Collar Murders, Pam took me to a conference on sexuality, taught me about safe words, and openly discussed all kinds of tantalizing ideas I had thought were better left unspoken.

That was when I was hooked.

Crime fiction, I realized, wasn’t only Belgian moustaches, country houses, ageing spinsters, and dashing rough-tough heroes with a glint in their eye, a quip on their lip, and far too much testosterone stuffed down their pants. And it could say much more about my life than whodunit?

Katherine V Forrest’s Kate Delafield came to me next – a University friend had noticed a trend in my reading – and that was pretty much that. Kate was hot.

Sure, I’ve flirted with straight women from time to time. The Women’s Press published Marcia Muller, whose early Sharon McCone might as well have been queer, and suggested I take a look at Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski. Suddenly I was on a long and winding road that took me through Liza Cody, Lauren Henderson, Linda Barnes, Carol O’Connell, and Karen Kijewski. Sue Grafton and Laura Lippman were next. Eventually Stephanie Plum. But my Women’s Press books were the ones.

They taught me what crime fiction could be. A way to talk about life. A context for any story.

They told me it was OK to be me.

And they inspired me to write.

My first full length book is called Riding in Cars with Girls. It’s a very noir, mostly queer, and thoroughly feminist crime fiction collection. My women are heroes and villains. Their sexuality is multi-faceted and explicitly depicted. Their streets are mean. Their worlds are wrong. And their solutions frequently lack in subtlety. There are, I have just realized, precisely no whodunits in this book. Not one murder is solved. But there are mysteries and, at heart, these are stories that go all the way back to my very first night with Lindsay Gordon. I’m very proud of that and I hope that maybe one day these stories may help someone just like the teenage me.

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If you’re tempted to take a walk on the Noir side of the street, Evangeline has sent us some of her top reading tips:

Murder in the Collective by Barbara Wilson (1984)
This intricate mystery is the first Pam Nielsen book and therefore the start – I think – of the first amateur lesbian detective series. If that wasn’t enough reason to read, here’s some more. First, this book is steeped in the women’s movement of the early 80s. It’s a story of two print collectives – one left-wing, one radical lesbian – and when they meet and plan to merge, it’s moider. Of course. Second, as if aware that she’s defining a new genre, Wilson’s Nilsen (ahem, giveaway rhyme ahoy) is straight when the book begins and only begins to realize the truth about her own sexuality in parallel with her search for a murderer.

She Came Too Late by Mary Wings (1986)
The first of the Emma Victor series. Not the best, but a good place to start.

Murder At The Nightwood Barby Katherine V Forrest (1987)
Strong, smart, and caring, Kate Delafield is an LAPD detective. This is the second of nine Delafield books, and it’s so much better than the first that I recommend you start here.

Common Murderby Val McDermid (1989)
In her second outing, Lindsay Gordon investigates first an assault and then a murder at a Women’s Peace Camp. It’s so clearly based on Greenham Common that it’s hard not to compare and contrast with Wilson’s Murder in the Collective for different takes on the feminist politics of the nineteen-eighties. It’s a purely personal point of view, but I think Wilson’s work has aged better.

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Riding in Cars with Girls will be published on April 16th. You can find out more about Evangeline and her books, here at her blog.

It’s been an excellent couple of weeks for news here in UK LesFic land, not necessarily in terms of quantity, but definitely in terms of quality. So let’s bloody-well get on with it, eh?

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First and foremost, a massive shout out to our very own Clare Ashton whose delightful RomCom, That Certain Something, has been shortlisted for a Lambda Literary award.

For those not in the know about these things, the Lambda Literary Awards “identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that LGBTQ stories are part of the literature of the world. The Awards ceremony has consistently drawn an audience representing every facet of publishing.”

The much-anticipated shortlist was announced on Wednesday 4th March, with Andrea Bramhall‘s Nightingale joining That Certain Something in the Lesbian Romance category. Sarah Waters‘ The Paying Guests was also listed in the category of Lesbian General Fiction.

The awards ceremony will take place on June 1st, and a full list of all the finalists can be found here. Congratulations and all the luck in the world to the three Brits (and to everyone else, of course!)

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It’s always lovely to welcome a new author to the site, and Evangeline Jennings has recently joined our listing. Born and raised in Liverpool, Evangeline now spends most of her time in Austin, TX. She is the author of Riding in Cars with Girls, a crime-themed collection of essentially feminist, very noir, and almost entirely queer short stories and novellas. She is also the founding editor of the Pankhearst writers collective. Her full bio can be found on the Authors page, and her next publication will be a short story in this erotica anthology.

Nicola Griffith‘s website has a whole new look and very nice it is too, with links to all of her books, loads of information, a blog section, and updates about guest appearances. The site is still a work in progress and Nicola is keen for reader feedback, so pay a visit and see what you think.

Sticking with that theme, Val McDermid‘s site has also had a makeover. There’s certainly a lot of information to be found, but with so much moving, streaming, and jumping out at you, you might want to take some Hyoscine before heading on over there!

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It’s a very award-themed update this one, and Emma Donoghue has just announced that Frog Music is one of four Honor Books in Literature for the 2015 Stonewall Book Awards:

The first and most enduring award for GLBT books is the Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table. Since Isabel Miller’s Patience and Sarah received the first award in 1971, many other books have been honored for exceptional merit relating to the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender experience.

All of this year’s Stonewall winners can be found here, and Emma’s news nicely coincides with the paperback release of Frog Music, which comes complete with a rather natty new cover design.

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Speaking of new covers and shiny things, I was pleasantly surprised to receive word from Bold Strokes that my fifth novel, Cold to the Touch – the second in the Dark Peak series of crime thrillers, and the sequel to June release No Good Reason – will be published in December, 2015. That was rather earlier than I’d anticipated, but very fitting for a winter-themed book. I suppose I’m a bit like the 192 bus: you wait and wait for one book to come out, and then two turn up in quick succession.

Given that the first book in the series isn’t out yet, I’ve tried to keep the blurb for book two spoiler-free, but it should be enough to give you a general idea…

Winter in the Derbyshire Peaks: months of knee-deep snow, short days, and rocketing crime rates.

Detective Sanne Jensen is living in self-imposed isolation and quietly falling apart, while Dr. Meg Fielding–Sanne’s best friend and occasional lover–is struggling to cope with her violent brother, who is back in town and demanding money that she doesn’t have.

When the murder of a drug addict is dumped onto Sanne’s already unmanageable caseload, she suspects the death may be the start of something more sinister. But how can she investigate a crime when no one cares about the victim? And how can she stop a killer who has no identity, no motive, and no conscience?

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A call to all budding UK LesFic authors now, as the Polari prize opens for submissions. If you’ve no idea what I’m yammering on about – where have you been?

Now in its fifth year, The Polari Prize is for a first book which explores the LGBT experience and is open to any work of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction published in English by a writer born or resident in the UK within the twelve months of the deadline for submissions (this year 1st February, 2015). Self-published works in both print and digital formats are eligible for submission.

Previous winners and nominees have included Mari Hannah, Kerry Hudson, and Beatrice Hitchman. All submissions for this year’s prize need to be in my May 1st, and for more information about the process, head over here. Good luck!

Bess is a rather sweet enigma wrapped in a formfitting disguise for the road that somewhat has her blending in with her highwayman colleagues and initially she is masked as they are… Along with Evelyn, I was constantly losing my balance and a sense of perspective largely because the highwaywoman is so difficult to get a handle on and nothing that unfolds could possibly have been anticipated. Disconcerting and exhausting, it was also exciting and extremely challenging. These twists and turns more than elevated the excitement. For me, they put this book in a class by itself!

Catherine Hall will be appearing at the Words by the Water Festival in beautiful Keswick on Friday 13th March, at 10.45 a.m). Tickets and more information are available here.

Hopping across into April, and Manda Scott will be discussing the topic Romans to Redcoats (which probably has nothing to do with Butlins!) at the Wrexham Carnival of Words on Saturday April 25th. The event will run from 2.30 p.m., and tickets can be purchased at this link.

As ever, event info can be found separately on our Events page, and I’ve recently updated the New & Upcoming Releases page as well – authors if you have a book out in the next five months or so, let us know about it!

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And that’s about all she wrote for this update. Have a lovely weekend and watch out for the eclipse (20th March!)